‘Excavating Pitt-Rivers’ Project

Drawings of flint arrow-heads collected by General Pitt-Rivers,
from the accession books of the Pitt Rivers Museum
The Victorian archaeologist General Pitt-Rivers is world-famous for his development of modern scientific archaeology, but the earliest archaeological collections that he made have never been studied. The Pitt Rivers Museum, where these artefacts are held, has been awarded £76,654 by Arts Council England’s Designation Development Fund to document this important early material.

The collections come from more than 50 prehistoric, Roman and medieval sites across the UK: from excavations at a medieval castle in Kent, from Bronze Age barrows in Yorkshire, from Iron Age hill-forts in Sussex, and even from early ‘rescue’ archaeology at Roman sites in central London. As well as documenting the collections, the ‘Excavating Pitt-Rivers’ project’s public archaeology programme will collaborate with local archaeologists in the regions from which the collections were excavated.